Impresario

Impresario RICHARD P. LEACH '32 is always in the lead at Saratoga. As Executive Director of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center he runs a winning place for shows.

Leach first visited Saratoga Springs, New York, when the Dartmouth Glee Club performed in concert with Skidmore in 1932. "I loved it then and I love it now," he says.

The $4-million Center is the setting for one of the newest summer festivals of music and dance. It is the permanent summer home of The New York City Ballet and The Philadelphia Orchestra.

It is more than the 5100-seat amphitheater (another 10,000 can sit on the sloping lawns) that prompts Leach's enthusiasm. "A performing arts center without performers is like Hamlet without a Hamlet - I believe this beautiful building is justified only by the performances that take place in it."

He says of the artists with whom he works - George Balanchine, Lincoln Kirstein, and Eugene Ormandy: "They are constantly widening and deepening the performing arts to which they are dedicated. This is the true measure of their artistic stature."

Leach joined the Center before groundbreaking in 1964 to guide fundraising and programming. The sellout success of last summer's opening season spurred both plant and program growth. This summer the Center will sponsor three schools - a full-scholarship school of ballet for 40 students, a full-scholarship school of music for 60 string players, and a non-scholarship school to be called the American Institute of Dressage, inspired by and presented with the collaboration of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna.

"Yes, this is a school for horses," he says, "white horses and riders. In the context of Saratoga, it seems 'a natural.' don't you think?"

It's unlikely that he is under great economic pressure to make a booming commercial success of the Center, an autonomous, nonprofit organization. The State of New York is the Center's benevolent landlord on a rent-free basis, also the contributor of its site and landscaping. But this summer's attractions are shoo-ins: from Yehudi Menuhin and his Bath Festival Orchestra to Harry Belafonte; from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to the Tijuana Brass.

In keeping with his own standards of excellence — Phi Beta Kappa at Dartmouth, graduate work at Oxford and the University of Paris - Leach has always worked with "top drawer" performers.

He launched his professional career with NBC where he wrote the scripts for the Metropolitan Opera's Saturday afternoon broadcasts and the programs of the NBC Symphony conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Entering the field of music management, with the National Concert and Arts Corporation, he was closely associated with Lotte Lehmann and Kirsten Flagstad. He was Fritz Kreisler's personal manager on the violinist's last two concert tours.

During World War II he served three years with the Navy and made fifteen amphibious landings in the Pacific. It was after the war that he became the first director of the Aspen Festival and vice president of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. He has since been programming director at Lincoln Center, director of the Metropolitan Opera Guild, and president of the board of directors of the National Music League. He is on the Music Advisory Committee of Hopkins Center.

In the parlance of Saratoga, Leach takes naturally to a fast track and is an odds-on favorite for many more honors in the winner's circle.